Every creative person has a dominant way they make things, a lens they look through before they even pick up the brush, the pen, the camera. I built our Creative Archetype Quiz around five of these patterns, each with a real gift and a real shadow side, and traced them through five women who embody them at their fullest. Which one are you?

Nine days apart, this year, we lost two of the most recognizable women in modern America — women who spent sixty years being almost nothing alike. One built an empire on rhinestones and a refusal to say an unkind word. The other spent her life saying the true thing out loud, whatever it cost her. Here's what their opposite legacies taught me about what authenticity actually is — and why the version you've been measuring yourself against might not be the right one.

While I was helping other people harness their creativity, I was quietly struggling to do the same for myself. Afraid to fail. Afraid to be seen. Convinced that making space for my own creative life was something I hadn’t earned yet.

Here’s what changed.